


Wrecking Havok

by irregardlxss



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort IN A STRICTLY PLATONIC WAY SRRY, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irregardlxss/pseuds/irregardlxss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's dark outside. Late. And it's raining hurricane-hard. Charles is holed up in the Mansion, chatting with the students of his newly reopened school. Everyone is calm and happy (well, maybe not /calm/, exactly, in Pietro's case).<br/>Then Charles' evening is split open by the almost broken pieces of a mind he thought he would never hear again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for: graphic descriptions of the /aftermath/ of violence (including injuries, some bloody, and a concussion), malnourishment as well as a canon-typical major character death that takes place offscreen, before the work begins

Alex stumbles. Again. He can't feel his feet anymore, which seems to work because they were killing him, but he has a hazy idea that maybe this doesn't mean good things for his condition in general, which was already shit. Black fog has started to gather around his glimpses of the rain-filled night, and he can feel himself shuddering. Not just with cold, either. Although there's plenty of that.  
Almost there, he tells himself. Almost there. A few more steps and he'll see it, the overgrown gate that means he's safe. Almost there. He stumbles again, just barely managing to catch himself before face-planting in the murky puddles below him. Good. He doesn't think he'll be able to get up again if he does. Alex bites that thought down. He has to get to the mansion. He - has to.  
For everybody's sake.  
The fog is getting thicker. Visibility wasn't all that good to begin with, what with the inky night being split only occasionally by shocks of lightning, and one eye being swollen almost shut, but now he can barely see the drops of rain lancing the air in front of his face.  
God, he hurts. All over. His ripped, muddy uniform is stuck to his skin with water and blood, and pulls as he manages a few more steps. His legs are cramping, seizing up. He's not sure if they'll hold much longer. Alex's broken wrist shoots sharp pain up his arm as he trips again, jolting it.  
Fuck. Ow. The hurt joins the sting of his many cuts and scrapes, and the dull ache of his painfully empty stomach. Damn. He's almost there. Almost.  
He glances up, and there it is, the wrought iron gate, shoved ajar, that means he's going to be alright, that he finally has somebody to take care of him.  
That means that the rest of the world is safe from him.  
He staggers through the gate, legs starting to ignore the commands he sends them. He's not going to make it to the mansion's front door, he can see that now, and he puts all the force of will he has left into a silent scream.  
CHARLES.  
The name pounds through his head, all the pain and desperation that are starting to overwhelm him lending it power. Alex needs Charles, needs him to be there and understand. Charles is the only father figure he's ever truly trusted, and Charles is he only one that can help him now. He's spent three nightmare days lurching towards the only friends he has in the world, three days of agony making his way slowly towards the only place he can be safe, and he's so close.  
So. Close.  
Charles' name splits his head again as the fog rises up and swallows him.

-

Pietro's friends are laughing. Again. At what, he isn't sure. He stopped listening. Ages ago. You know how painfully slow normal conversation is? It takes forever for anyone to make a point. Forever. He likes these guys, he really does, but good god. How can they be enjoying this?  
He's amusing himself by flitting between random chairs across the room, just to hear conversation stop and start again, when he notices that the prof has stopped laughing. He looks serious now. He's focusing. On what, Pietro doesn't know. The prof's doing that weird thingy with his hand that means he's trying to focus his telepathy. Whatever it is, he means business.  
Pietro hates not knowing what's going on. Things are so boring when he doesn't know the whole story. It sucks. He runs to the middle of the room, then waits impatiently for the prof to catch up to him.  
Pietro does an unfortunate amount of that. Waiting.  
And he has the patience of, like, a caffeinated snow flea.  
By the time the prof is focusing on the actual room in front of him, everyone else is watching him, too. Everyone else, of course, being Hank. Or Beast. It depends what you're in the mood for. The several small, runaway children don't count.  
"What's up, Professor?" Pietro asks, because he's already been waiting for a good thirty seconds and he thinks he might die if he has to stay still for the length of time it takes for Hank to pop the question.  
The prof (of course) takes a minute, marshalling his thoughts while studiously looking grave. Damn. Gravity. Pietro's really not cool with that either. In both senses of the word. Ha.  
He does, however, know that most other people take issue with him jaunting off to random locations while they're occupying themselves looking grave, so he tries. He really does.  
The upshot of this is that, by the time the prof's conjured an actual explanation, his shoelaces both kind of look like bunny rabbits riding motorcycles.  
Kind of. If you know what to look for.  
"Alex is out there," the professor informs them.  
Pietro gets the feeling this is directed towards Hank, mostly because he knows Alexander "Alex" Summers, also known as Havok and the probable topic of conversation here, only from several late-night file searches.  
And the prof would be pissed if he knew about those.  
"What?" Hank asks, stunned. "You mean like, Havok-Alex? Our Alex?"  
The kids are all sitting stock-still, staring in awed confusion at the prof. They have even less idea than Pietro, and they don't like it, either. There's a telltale flutter of wind in the air that means Ororo is getting stressed out.  
He fixes his shoelaces.  
"Yes, Hank, our Alex," the prof responds.  
"He's trying desperately to get here, but he's hurt, and he doesn't think he'll make it. I can't get much - he's exhausted - but he's mentally yelling my na-"  
The prof grimaced again. Pietro waited. With commendable patience, he thought.  
"He just passed out. Pietro, would you mind-"  
"On it, prof." Pietro careens towards Hank, figuring there was no point not bringing backup. Pietro knows, like, nothing about the human body, and Hank is killer smart about pretty much everything, so he's probably more qualified than Pietro to actually deal with someone potentially mortally wounded.  
Plus, he actually knows this Alex guy, so several more points to him.  
Pietro, reaching Hank, cradles the back of his neck, which always delights him. Pietro takes a kind of perverse amusement from the way people get all creeped out. He has to do it. Neck support is vitally important. Duh.  
Plus, it reminds him of that time he broke into the Pentagon, which was freaking cool.  
"We're going," he announces, not quite sure if he said it slow enough for anybody else to hear but figuring they'd get the gist of it anyways because he really doesn't have the patience to find out for sure.  
He wonders vaguely how a snow flea would get ahold of caffeine.  
Having a passenger is way less fun than running normally, because he can't really do much but go right where he needs to go, and he's worrying about the other guy the whole time. Hank's done it before, though, so he's not super worried. Plus, Pietro checked Hank's files that one time and he totally had special bone structure and cool shit like that because of the whole "Beast" thing, so he holds up awesome. He doesn't even have to turn blue.  
That part, Pietro admits, is mildly disappointing.  
Damn. It is raining hard outside.  
Like, cats and dogs hard. Hurricane-hard.  
Pietro's glad he has his goggles. Plus, they make him look cool.  
Lightning strikes as he runs Hank out, which is frigging awesome because when he's going fast he gets to see the lightning actually hit. Slowly. It goes down and then does the main flash thing on the way back up and he tried telling people that once but no one believed him because who would believe a silver-haired kid wearing goggles anyways?  
Focus, Pietro, he tells himself. Alex. He's looking for Alex. Alex Summers, which is admittedly not the most exciting of names. Havok's a bit better, but Pietro doesn't get why he couldn't just keep the frigging c on the end and not make the incredibly tacky move of changing it to k, because life is certainly complicated enough without messing with your consonants.  
He does, however, suppose it's better than replacing s with z unnecessarily, which bugs the shit out of him for no apparent reason.  
Focus. It really is an issue.

Hank still has no idea what's going on. One minute he's sharing a joke with Charles, and, in the next, the professor is staring off into some middle distance, grimacing. Cue Pietro Maximoff grabbing his neck, which he swears the kid does just to make other people uncomfortable, and before he can blink he's standing in the pouring rain, there's the unconscious body of one of his oldest friends slumped in a puddle in front of him, and Pietro's muttering vaguely about improper naming conventions. Holy Hell.  
Alex looks bad, too. From what Hank can see in the erratic flashes of lightning, he's piled in an ungainly heap of arms and legs, and his sodden army uniform is almost shredded in places. There's blood, too, and a cringe-worthy assortment of cuts and scrapes and bruises, most of which he's clearly ignored. To their detriment. They're filthy. And infected. There's pus. And one of Alex's wrists is bent almost entirely backwards.  
The upshot of all this is that Hank hasn't even properly looked at Alex, and he already wants to vomit. Who decided Hank should learn first aid, anyways? Yes, he has steady hands, and yes, he's smart and a quick learner, and admittedly he does turn into a large hairy beast-creature, but he doesn’t need to see the uglier side of the human body, thank you very much. Dealing with puking mutant children was bad enough, but seeing Alex broken and bleeding in the middle of the muddy driveway overwhelms. A lot.  
"You ok?" Pietro's concerned brown eyes randomly appear, inches from his own. The sad thing is that he's not even surprised.  
"'Cuz, man, you don't look so good." The eyes are gone as fast as they appeared, and in the next flash of lightning Hank can see that Pietro is kneeling down in front of Alex. "Shouldn't you be doing something?" the kid asks, beside him now. He's observing Alex the same way Hank would observe a particularly interesting and mildly disgusting lab specimen, but Hank can hear the worry in his voice.  
That does sting. Hank doesn't need to be schooled in responsibility by a confirmed felon, especially a teenage one. With dorky silver hair. And goggles, for god's sake. He tries to swallow down the nausea that the wrongness of Alex's crumpled body inevitably bestows, and then kneels down beside him. Hank feels down the length of his friend's spine, checking for injuries. Partly because the last time he knelt over someone he was close to like this, it was Charles, who only walked again thanks to several years of drug addiction, and partly because he really does need to know if Alex can be moved.  
Either way, it feels weird. The two guys were best friends, almost brothers, but they very rarely shared, you know, actual physical contact. In fact, the last and only time they did was the last time they saw each other. Right before Alex left. For Vietnam. Admittedly, that one hug is not a pleasant memory. God damn it.  
As far as Hank could tell, Alex is safe to be moved, so he rolls the other mutant over. The wet noise his unconscious body made as he flips onto his back was almost enough to send Hank over. Shit.  
Pietro appears beside him, steadying Alex's broken wrist before it has time to flop down. The silver-haired teen's big, brown eyes are reproachful, and they have every right to be. Hank's panicking. Freaking out. One of his oldest friends is lying in a puddle in the pouring rain, broken and battered and looking like he went through hell and back to get there. And a frigging hyperactive kleptomaniac is having to catch the mistakes that Hank himself is making.  
He takes a deep breath. Another. When he finally trusts himself to look at Alex's face, it's not good. There aren't bags under his eyes, there are fucking suitcases, and his cheekbones are painfully sharp against the hollows of his cheeks. One of his eyes is hidden behind a swollen knot of greenish-purple flesh, and his lips are blue. Actually blue. In fact, Alex's lips are the exact same colour as Hank's own fur, which, he realizes belatedly, popped out when he was busy dancing on the edge of hysteria.  
"Holy Hell," he mutters under his breath, and Pietro pops into view on Alex's other side. Hank notices distractedly that the kid's silver hair is half wet and stuck straight out behind his head. It's all he can do not to laugh. That really would be hysteria.  
"Are his lips supposed to be that colour?" Pietro demands. "Because they don't look right." Hank can only shake his head, rain dripping down his face. Thunder claps, startling him, and Pietro is suddenly beside him, holding a stack of blankets that are rapidly becoming waterlogged. Hank, still in shock, stares in fascination at the pile of fabric, which is more of a crumpled heap and bears a startling resemblance to the linens from Pietro's own bed. Good God.  
"Oi. You're supposed to be the smart one. The lips mean he's freezing, right?" The unruly shock of silver hair blinks into view right in front of Alex's face. "So, blankets," Pietro finishes, proffering the tangle of fabric for Hank's inspection. Hank blinks dazedly, watching as the kid systematically covers Alex's crumpled form in his bedclothes. They're already drenched, and, considering the fact that Alex's uniform is laden with numbingly cold water, probably won't be much good. Hank comes this close to laughing at the absurdity of it all.  
"HANK!" Pietro yells, suddenly right in front of his face again. "You need to do something. Havok's super hurt and obviously freezing and starving and exhausted and is lying unconscious in a really cold mud puddle in the middle of a thunderstorm, for fuck’s sake, and I have no fucking idea what to do and would probably make him worse anyways if I tried to do anything and you're trained for this and he's your friend and please do something!"  
Pietro is yelling. Actually yelling. Hank has never seen the kid that worked up before. Also, he's totally right. Even if all that rightness was delivered in an epic run-on sentence.  
Hank shakes his head, dog-style, and that almost renders him useless once more, because he hates displaying animal tendencies, but he catches himself.  
"Right. Inside." he mutters, half to himself. He looks up to where Pietro is waiting expectantly, actually displaying a modicum of patience, for once. "I don't think you moving him would be a good idea, because of the stress that would put on his fractured wrist. I, um, don't actually think you could carry him amyways, so I'll do it. Do you think you could make sure his wrist stays put?"  
"Yep," the newly begoggled Pietro says. Eloquent.  
"Right." For once in Hank's life, he's glad he's gone blue, because the weight of even an awkward, well-muscled Alex-body is nothing to him. His friend's limbs hang limply down, their unnatural angles almost putting Hank over again, but he sucks in a breath and manages to stay focused.  
Alex needs you. Breathe. Step, step, breathe. Step. Keep walking. Pietro walks beside him, displaying an uncharacteristic amount of focus. The kid's obviously super worried about Alex, which ups Hank's opinion of him considerably, taking into account that the two mutants had never actually met.  
Lightning strikes again, and Hank jumps. Pietro has to leap after him to prevent Alex's wrist from another impending disaster. Shit. Hank's suddenly irrationally terrified that Alex is going to die in his arms from the cold. He speeds up, taking long, ground-covering beast-strides, and Pietro has to jog to keep up. Hank had no idea that the distance from the gate to the mansion was so bloody big, and he can't see because of he rain and the dark and why on earth did Charles' family build their mansion in the fucking middle of nowhere, anyways?  
Finally, just as the question "will I get my unconscious best friend inside before my arms fall off" becomes almost alarmingly pressing, the door is right in front of Hank's face. Pietro flickers and then the door is open and the kid is steadying Alex's wrist against an unusually strong buffet of wind.  
Well played.  
Charles, somehow, has coerced the kids into bed. What feats of magic this required, Hank doesn't want to think about, but the professor himself is sitting in the warm entryway, worrying. Quite openly.  
Which, admittedly, is something Charles is good at.  
Hank steps into the entryway, warm air washing over him. His blue fur hangs off him in ungainly, soaked clumps, and he feels kind of like a large, indignant, soaked cat. An azure one. Who can barely breathe for worry about the friend he just hauled in pieces out of a thunderstorm.  
"Watch him," Pietro orders, cheerfully random, and then his alarming silver presence vanishes. Hank barely has time to guard against the resulting gust when the kid shows up again, perched behind Charles and making an expansive gesture at a pile of cushions Hank is sure weren't there before. He isn't complaining, though. Hell no.  
Hank, setting Alex down in the light, finally gets a good look at him. Hell. Aside from the aforementioned wrist/eye/lips thing, the guy looks like he's been worked over with the entire contents of an industrial kitchen. Multiple times. And, judging by the pus, a grimy one.  
Plus, the whole malnourishment deal - there are muscles, yes, but his cheeks could have been scooped out with a shovel. And the fact that he clearly hasn't slept at /all/ for at least three days. Bags under eyes are one thing. Hank himself is a prime specimen of that, but Alex, at least under his good eye, has a shadowy indigo bruise stretching down to the top of his cheekbone. With the bad eye, the whole eye's like that. And, on top of all that, he's absolutely saturated in icy rainwater. Alex's hair is longer than usual, probably thanks to sheer neglect, and is plastered across the bruised surface of his clammy forehead. Veins are pulsing blue through the surface of his usually tanned skin, and Hank knows he already mentioned the whole lips being blue thing, but he feels it deserves reiteration. His lips are fucking blue.  
"What do you think happened?" Pietro demands, almost too quickly to be understandable. There are goggles two inches from his nose again, his distorted reflection visible on their droplet-filled surface, and he reflects somewhat ironically that he didn't even blink this time. "Because to me it kinda looks like he was beaten up after starving and then walked a really long way in the rain."  
Sounds about right. But, however it happened, the fact remains that he has to get Alex into the infirmary and in stable condition. Quickly. He tries to sigh dramatically, but it comes out as more of a growl than a huff because he's still blue, and, either way, he's more worried about Alex than anything.  
"Pietro, will you do your thing again?". He deliberately ignores the kid’s first question, which, unfortunately, is probably answer enough. Grunting again, he leans down and scoops Alex up, working carefully to balance his assorted fragile appendices.  
It's going to be a long walk.


	2. Treating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings for: ptsd-related panic attacks, hints at the aftermath of torture

Yep. It's official.  
Pietro _sucks_ with injuries. He's awful. Truly, horribly bad. Pearl Harbor bad.  
Alex has been lying in an infirmary bed, fixed up to the best of Hank's abilities, for an impressive total of two minutes. And six seconds. And, _shockingly_ , Pietro has now been told off for trying to check his bandages six or seven times. Typical. Why can't normal human bodies move _faster_? Alex is doing nothing. Just lying there. And breathing, which, Pietro supposes, is a good thing. Yeah. If he started /not/ breathing, that would be bad. But breathing, truly, is not all that amusing.  
And Alex is doing about the minimum amount you can do if you expect to continue existing. Hank, too, is not helping. He's been talking. For the entire two minutes and six seconds. Eight, now. He's explaining what he did, and why, which might have been cool if Pietro hadn't _seen him do it_.  
Right. In front. Of his face.  
And the prof is just sitting there. Listening. Intently. With _focus_. The man is a giant, as far as patience is concerned. It probably has something to so with all those kids. And that Erik guy. He can't be easy to deal with, either.  
Although Pietro is aware that he's not the best gauge, as far as patience is concerned. He's only a few milliseconds away from resorting to the shoelace-tying thing he was doing before, when the professor looks away from Hank's lecture about Alex's probable pneumonia.  
Well, looks is a loose term. There are looks, and then there are _looks_. And the prof's look is one hundred percent fit into the second category. Not even in the random overlap-y spot in the venn diagram. All the way. That, man, is a _look_.  
Right. Venn diagrams aside, the prof _looks_ away from Hank. At Alex. _Very_ intensely. Hank doesn't even notice.  
Pietro takes a few microseconds to mentally rave about the one-sided intensity of Hank's focus, too.  
"Alex?". It's Mr. Xavier. Sharply. The prof is worried about something. He's got fingers on his temple again, doing that dorky power-focus thing (Pietro _swears_ , if he ever has to do something like that to use his mutation, then he's hunting down his lost twin just so she can punch him somewhere painful), and Hank jumps like he's been stung, staring. Probably at the profs hand thing, which makes him look like a stoner with a migraine.  
Pietro doesn't blame him.  
Hank, he means. The prof totally gets blamed. He's the one doing the dumbass hand gesture.  
Alex snaps into a sitting position. The guy moves impressively fast, for someone normal. He actually makes Pietro jump - he had no idea Alex was awake.  
The guy whips his head around, searching madly, with his usable hand out in front of him, balled into a fist. He yanks the other one against his chest. The guy looks like a wounded animal.  
Ah. Thats why. Alex is moving on instinct - pure, primal terror. That's the only way it makes sense he moved so fast. He's _used_ to waking up in god-awful pain and having to defend himself against bad guys. _Used to it_.  
Holy fuck.  
Pietro knows (yes, from the same after-dark file snooping, shut up) that Alex was in 'Nam. Neither Hank or the prof talk about it. But not even fighting on the front lines could have caused this - Alex's eyes (well, eyes is a figure of speech, considering the struggling mutant only has one that opens), not yet capable of focus, are searching madly around the room, and every muscle on his body (Hank stripped his saturated shirt off and the blankets fell down with the force of his sitting up, Pietro can see enough of them to make a decent assumption) is taut with fear. He's breathing in sharp, uneven pants.  
The sudden violent movement forced one of the scabs apart, and Pietro is momentarily transfixed by the resulting line of crimson blood that traces its way down to the sheets.  
Well, momentarily from his point of view. Nanosecond-arily would probably be more accurate, but who says that?  
"Alex." Charles repeats himself, but the lucky bastard is British, so he gets away with it. Frigging accents. "You're among friends, Alex. You can relax. Nobody here is going to hurt you." The prof's British-guy voice is low and intense, almost pleading.  
Pietro glances over, and sees that Charles is leaning forward in his wheelchair, staring at Alex's face. His hand, stupid gesture aside, is trembling against his temple, and the other one is gripping Alex's shoulder. He's doing something telepathic - probably trying to calm Alex down.  
Pietro snaps his gaze down to his own silver shoes. The prof's eyes are wet. He's _crying_. Fuck. Pietro does not need to see Charles crying. Whatever he's doing works, though. Alex's frantic searching slowly calms, eyes coming gradually into focus. He unclenches his fist, using the good hand to clutch the broken one against his bare chest. He's trembling.  
Peeking back at Charles, Pietro sees that he's taken his hand away from his temple. He must see Alex relaxing. Because he is relaxing. His panicked breathing is slowly abating. Pietro watches, stiller than he's been in a very long time, as Alex slowly calms down.  
As he snaps right back in to panicked dread.  
"No." The voice is hoarse and cracked and just barely escaping his swollen, raw lips, laden with dread and tinged with desperation.  
"No. Please. You can't be near me."  
Alex is leaning forward now, eye drilling into Charles' even though he's depending more and more on his mentor's hand on his shoulder to hold him up.  
What. The. Fuck.  
"Get me away from you. Charles. Please." Alex's weak voice cracks under the weight of the urgency lining it, not able to convey the desperation he needs to get across. Pain is threading its way across his face, and his shoulders are sagging as the state of his body starts to yank him back under.  
Everyone else is standing in mute shock. Fucking _civilians_. Pietro darts forward to grab Alex's other shoulder as he droops against Charles' hand, unable to hold himself up anymore. The tan is leaching out of his angular, bruised face. He's passing out. Again.  
Somehow, though, he musters the strength to grab Charles' arm. The guy has an _impressive_ force of will.  
"Please," he chokes out, voice slurred and cracking and just barely there. Welts pulse red against the stark white of his face, and he's pleading now. Close to tears.  
"I can't control it."  
Alex’s bruised torso slumps against their arms, unconscious.

Holy _shit_.  
That was an _impressive_ display. Hank and Charles, battle-hardened veterans though they are, are just standing there. Well, sitting there, in Charles' case. Because he can't stand. Duh.  
The point is, neither of them are moving. The prof's eyes are still silently churning out tears, and Hank's got his mouth hanging open wide enough to catch, like, a small hamster. Pietro himself is just standing there, like some sort of dimwit, with his arm still out, holding some random mutant's senseless body.  
Whoops.  
Pietro moves first. It's rather boring, really. Pietro _always_ moves first. Always. Something to do with thinking faster. Cuts down on reaction time.  
The upshot is that, as Charles and Hank are still hanging out, gaping and emotional, he gently lowers Alex back against the rock-like infirmary cushion. Normal-people speed. Which is _hard_. Pietro's practically vibrating.  
He dashes off to grab Alex some decent cushions - the one he has bears a startling resemblance to a cement block. Pietro should know- he's had to deal with that very bed. It sucks. He returns, arranges the cushions _at freaking painfully slow speed_ so as to not jar Alex, and turns around to face the other two. And Hank is _still. Blinking. Haplessly_.  
Charles however, is moving. Pietro looks away surreptitiously as he scrubs the tears off his now-soaked face. He wheels himself away from the bed, and turns to face Pietro and Hank. Hank closes his mouth, staving off hamster attack. For now.  
“What. The fuck. Was that,” Pietro asks, figuring words were necessary.  
Charles doesn’t even correct him for swearing.


	3. Decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: human trafficking/ torture

Charles sits back in his wheelchair, studying the comatose figure in front of him. Alex is one of his oldest students - someone he thinks of as more than just a friend. He was devastated when the younger mutant announced that he was fighting in the war. Having him back is almost unthinkable. 

  Although, Alex may not be back in the same shape as he left. 

  The things he saw in the boy's mind worry him. Alex was panicking for half of the short time he was awake, so Charles didn't get to see a lot, but he caught disjointed flashes. Disturbing ones. 

  Being strapped to a table, masked men leering over him. 

  Throat and lungs filling with stinking, burning gas. 

  A male voice in the background, just audible enough that there's no blocking it out, screaming in unadulterated pain. 

  Stumbling in the rain down a succession of abandoned roads. 

   The inferno of his powers filling a white room and trying desperately to stop it, to no avail. 

  Bone-crushing guilt. 

  Charles isn't sure what happened to Alex. The glimpses in his mind confirmed what he told him - somehow, inexplicably, he lost the control of his powers that he struggled for so long to gain. 

  Charles had consulted with Hank and Pietro, telling them what he had managed to figure out, and they had agreed to take precautions. Hank had helped him move Alex onto a cot in the shelter underneath the mansion that Alex had used as a range before going off to fight. Pietro had helped, too, mainly by amassing a ridiculously large collection of blankets and pillows from all corners of the mansion. 

  All three of them had felt awful about leaving the broken mutant alone in the clammy dark of the shelter. Pietro had protested loudly, almost too fast to hear, but Hank and Charles beat him down. Alex lived in _dread_ of hurting somebody with his mutation. The powers it gave him were destructive, and he had spent a lengthy amount of time in solitary confinement to avoid doing more damage than e had already accidentally done. 

  When Charles helped Alex finally gain control, it was a pivotal moment in the teen's life. If the mutation hurt anybody else, it would destroy him. Charles cared enough for Alex that he would be hurt, too. So, eventually, they decided that it would be best for Alex to go into the shelter. 

Charles would keep a telepathic eye on him.


	4. Help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: human experimentation/ torture, nightmares, grief, graphic descriptions of vomiting, malnourishment mention

_The room finally comes into view. Alex, the hurt of his battle wounds forgotten, sprints down the hallway as fast as he can. His team follows behind, running hard to keep up with his desperate excitement._

_The smell of the place accosts him. It reeks of sterility and antiseptic, stinking strongly enough to burn his nose. Even this stench, though, isn't completely masking the putrid odor of corruption oozing through._

_Fluorescent lights beat down on him, illuminating the blank floors and walls and making the entire experience seem surreal. He and his team are the only colour in the place. They're suspended in a pale grey fog._

_Head just as foggy as his monotonous surroundings, Alex reaches the door, kicks it open, and steps through. It's deadly silent - even the heavy footsteps and panting of his team are half covered by a thick, stifling quiet._

_Alex scans the room. He gave up on objectivity ages ago - even out loud he says_ Sean _instead of_ The Asset. _He's well aware that it isn't good form to be emotionally invested in the mission, but he's entirely beyond caring._

  There. 

   _He sees it - a still form laid out on an operating table. His eyes are glued to it as he walks up, but his focus is uninterrupted by any scientists or nurses. All the hostiles seem to have completely cleared out._

_His vision does this really fucking cheesy thing where it zeros in on the table, and kind of tunnels everything else out. As he walks towards it, it becomes increasingly so that it's all he can see._

_Something's wrong._

_As he walks closer, he can feel it. There's something about the sight of Banshee's body that presses on the top of his head, squeezing his already short breath out of his chest. He sucks at the thick, putrid air, staring. Trying desperately to catalogue the thing that seems essentially_ wrong _about the sight in front of him._

   _It slams into him, and suddenly he's seeing spots and can no longer absorb any of the heavy air._

_Sean isn't breathing._

_He staggers forward. Lurches to a stop beside his best friend's body._

_He can see it now. Sean's skin is unnatural blue colour, the veins visible through his transparent skin. Shaking, he puts his filthy fingers on the side of his friend's neck. Checks for a pulse._

_His fingers come away the rust-brown of dried blood._

_Alex is suddenly on his knees, seeing the blank gray walls cover themselves in dancing black spots. His head is reeling, and the stinking air refuses to enter his lungs no matter how hard he pulls at it. The buzz in the room grows louder and louder, squeezing on his ears until he feels like it should crack his skull from the pressure._

_Sean's dead._

_One of his best friends, one of the only people who knew what a monster he was and hung out with him anyways, the top of the list of guys who would actually_ have fun _in Alex's company, the boy he was supposed to be rescuing, is gone._

_His carved husk is lying on a slab of metal in front of Alex's face._

_The pressure keeps pounding down on his head, pushing and squeezing and compressing unmovable things closer and closer to together, until, finally, Alex pops. His body implodes and his head snaps back and he's only half aware of a tortured, guttural noise and he has a vague idea it's coming from him._

_His powers flash out, dazzling and bright and unforgivingly deadly, and despite the fact that the unbridled mutation is slicing through walls and people and corpses alike with hot, destructive power, he_

_Can't_

_Make it_

_Stop._

  Alex lurches up, gasping for breath. He's topless, and is now sitting on a small, soft cot. It's freezing, wherever the fuck he his, and the only sound accompanying the shaky pants he's breathing in is the sharp rattle of his own chattering teeth.  He's shaking with cold and horror despite the weight of blankets that someone has smothered him in. 

  He jerks his head around, searching frantically with the one eye the compound's guards left to him. His mind is reeling dizzily and there's a headache drilling into the side of it, but he finally discerns he's alone. There's nobody around to get hurt by him. 

  Thank god. 

  Alex's stomach twists, and he's going to puke. _Sean._ He rolls desperately, trying to get off of the bed, but his legs tangle in the knot of blankets and he lands hard on his side on the concrete floor. One wrist is caught in a vice grip of pain. 

  He tries to crawl away, but he's trapped in blankets and one arm is throbbing mightily and won't hold weight and all he can manage is an awkward grovelling scoot that grates against the clammy concrete and still manages to beat up his already fucking sore body. 

  Alex lets out a pathetic, pitiful moan. 

   _Shit._ He can't help it. He's on the ground, broken, not even able to _fucking crawl_ forward enough to puke up the negligible contents of his malnourished stomach. There's no one there to help him, but it's his own damn fault because he's poisonous enough to hurt anybody long before they get close enough to comfort him. He's completely alone, and is disgusted with himself for feeling lonely. He can't be around people. Being alone is the only possible way. 

  Still, he's weak enough right now to look past the risks and admit that he wants somebody else there. In another act of betrayal, his throat allows another wretched groan to burst by it. 

  He's only managed two or three painful feet when his stomach lurches unstoppably and forces its contents up and out. Bile splatters onto the rough floor. His stomach empties within two heaves, but his body keeps going, wracking itself with crushing retches that he can just barely squeeze breaths around. 

  His one good arm is shaking violently, and he's weak enough that it will give way any second now. His attempts at bracing himself are interrupted all too regularly by the wracking heaves, but he tries. His arm is quaking, now, jerking his body around even more. His head pounds. 

  Just as he's no longer capable of holding himself up, just as his weakened, overtaxed arm gives out and he screws his face up to be ready for the pain, he's suddenly supported. Strong hands close around his sweat-soaked ribs, taking the weight of his body. 

  He freezes. Well, freezes the best he can with his traitor body still dry heaving uncontrollably. His mind blanks out. 

  He has no idea what to do. 

  "Alex," a voice murmurs. Male. British. Low and worried. 

   _Charles. Shit. Holy shit._

  "It's alright, Alex. I have you."

   _No. Shit, no._

  Alex battles to stop heaving. He obviously loses, having to cut his struggle short once he realizes that working himself up might just set off his mutation and kill Charles right then. Why couldn't the man just _listen?_

  He tries to convey this, but is once again cut off by a retch, making it come out more like an inelegant groan. That _idiot._ He's a professor, he should _know_. Alex is a fuse, and is _not_ to be trusted. _Shit._

  He can't even deny how good the human touch feels. 

  "Alex," the prof says again, and if Charles says his name one more time he's going to fucking _scream_. "I'm in your head, and I'm sorry, but I have control of your mutation, even if you don't. I won't let it hurt me."

   _Finally,_ Alex finishes puking. He knows there are tears running down his trembling face, but he can't bring himself to care. He just slumps to the side, the nubs of his spine coming to rest against Charles' wheelchair. 

  " _What?_ " he manages. "Y-you can- do that?" 

  Charles produces a very british noise that still undeniably means yes. 

  Alex is shuddering. The contact - Charles still has his hands on Alex's bare sides - feels _wrong_. It whips such a frenzy of emotions inside him. Concern's there, and gratitude, sharing a fucked-up bowl with terror and guilt. Sorrow, too. There's so much inside of him, and it's all being sliced up and forced together and whipped into peaks until even is clueless about what the individual pieces were. It's confusing, and awful, and he hurts, all over, and he can't _think._

  Charles gets this. Of course he does, he's a fucking telepath. Alec can't see him, but he's pretty sure that the older man is just sitting there, watching him. There's still one hand on his back, and he has no clue what to do about it. He doesn't want it to go away. 

  Alex finally calms himself down enough to talk. He doesn't know what to say, so he just bashes through like the destructive, insensitive idiot he knows he is. 

  "Sean's dead," he announces, and then cringes.  _Fuck._ could he be any more blunt? 

  Charles' hand doesn't retreat, though. It moves to his side and grips him tighter. 

  "I know," Charles replies, voice shaking but somehow still calm. Reassuring. Alex is propped against a wheelchair on a concrete floor in an underground nuclear shelter, barely avoiding his own vomit, but he finally feels safe. 

  "We've known for a while. I'm so sorry, Alex." 

  His head starts to fog up again. Charles is still unabashedly in it, though, so he notices. 

  "We"ll have plenty of time to talk about this later. If you lean on my chair, could you get back into bed?" 

  He manages it. Somehow, miraculously, Charles gets him back into bed, and replaces some of the blankets. He's too tired for it to embarrass him. The fog swirls around, covering more and more of him until only one thought glimpses through. 

  "You will go now, right?" Alex pleads. 

  Charles' face, leaning over him, twitches. Upset. Fucking _shit._ Way to lash out at  _the one person_ who could come anywhere near him.  _Damn._ He  _hates_ being such an asshat. He tries to sit up, but the murk his head's sinking into won't let him and Charles puts a hand back on his shoulder. 

  "Hey. The moment you fall asleep, I'll get out. I won't let you hurt me, Alex. Sleep. You need it."

  He smiles. 

  The last thing he sees before the mist overwhelms him is the concerned, understanding face of his mentor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have screwed with the sequence of events, but meh. It's _my_ fanfiction, suckers.


End file.
